Modernity: Just Another Cage for The Modern Woman?

Questioner: Good afternoon, sir. My name is Priyanshu from the History Department. My question is: Despite unprecedented strides in legal rights and social visibility, women across the world continue to face subtle forms of control and expectation. How does modernity, which ensures freedom, create an invisible cage for women? And how does Mahatma Gandhi's vision for true liberation help us identify and dismantle them? Dismantle them. Thank you, sir.

Acharya Prashant: Do we get the question? So, there is the condition of the so-called modern and emancipated woman, and the questioner is saying that she is still in a cage, though the cage is now invisible, as you said. And he's setting it against the backdrop of the Gandhian ideal of liberation. Getting you right? Alright.

So, is the modern, educated, liberated woman really free? If we have two pictures here — one of a rural woman in a sari doing household work, and next to it, a picture of an urban, a metropolitan woman attending her office — which of these two would you feel like, immediately, instinctively feel like calling as liberated? The second image, right? Wearing more modern clothes and attending office instead of looking after household chores — you'll say, "This is the liberated one." The second image corresponds to freedom, liberty, whatever. And that is exactly the problem.

Freedom cannot be an image. And if freedom is an image, then freedom is confinement.

Freedom is bondage to that image. Do you get this? Where were we? Yes, the image. So, if you know in advance that this is what it means to be modern, then where is freedom? A man, a boy, a girl, a young person sitting here — if they know well in advance that this second image, here is the first one — and this is not modern: conservative, traditional, and all that. This is the liberated one (Second image).

And you know in advance, this is what is called liberation. If this is what is called liberation, where is freedom?

You have been told in advance what to do, how to look, how to operate, how to behave. You have been told in advance, "This is the kind of life you must lead." And if this is how you would be, then you deserve to be called modern or liberated. And you have to do this. You have to be like this.

Now, is that freedom? Is that freedom?

First of all, there is a framework, just as the picture has a frame. No? It’s — what do we say? It’s a framed photo. So, there is a framework, and the woman is not being allowed to go beyond that framework.

Secondly, all that you see in the image is a particular kind of behavior. What you see is a particular kind of behavior, and what you see is only the exterior. You look at her face, and it probably has a different kind of makeup compared to the rural woman. Her haircut might be different, the choice of clothes would be different and obviously, the environment — the surroundings, the workplace — that is different.

All of that is telling you only of the exteriors, right? Is there any way any image can peep into their insides and know what’s going on? No. So first of all, we said there is no freedom because there is a framework. If you look like this, if you behave like this, only then you deserve to be called modern and liberated.

Secondly, all you see is the exterior, whereas freedom is firstly a thing of the inside. Freedom is first of all a thing of the inside. Freedom is not something so cheap that you can be called free just by wearing a particular kind of trendy wear.

And that's where the Gandhian context becomes relevant. Because when Gandhi talked of liberation, in the tradition — the long-standing tradition — of the wise thinkers of India and the world, he was very clear. And what he said has been almost central to all wisdom, all spirituality. He said, “No, no. Freedom is first of all about how you are on the inside. Are you carrying prejudices, biases, fears, greedy desires, self-centered ambitions?” If this is what you are carrying within, you’re not free at all.

So, in the context of the Indian freedom struggle, he would say it is not about just driving the British away. It is about, first of all, being eternally free. There is a reason the British could come here and capture territory and lord over us. And the reason was internal. Unless that internal reason is addressed, just trying to shoo the British away would take us nowhere.

And then he said freedom is about how you behave with the people around you. So — internal and then the second level was social. And among the people around you, he did count women. That was very important to his thought. All the marginalized sections of society — the poor, the Dalits — he referred to them as Harijans and women.

He said, unless you are conscious of the kind of behavior and relationship you have with the people around you, how can you be called as free? If you are just unconsciously toeing that traditional line — which might be exploitative, which is indeed quite exploitative — then how are you free? How can an unconscious person be called as free? If you're lying unconscious, what freedom do you have?

And then he said, freedom must also be about not being dictated — even within your own sovereign by a fire of power. It is not just about not being commanded by London. It is also about not being commanded by Delhi. It is not just about not being commanded by an outsider. It is also about not being commanded by an insider.

So he would talk of the village self-rule, and the village as the primary, self-sufficient economic entity. Obviously, there are problems with that model, but the thought — the philosophical basis — he was coming from, still holds merit. So: freedom internal, freedom social, and freedom not just from those you consider as outsiders or aliens or the other, but freedom also from the one you consider as the insider, or your own. Right?

So that was what Mahatma Gandhi thought of as liberation. And that’s a very central word to all Indian philosophy. Indian philosophies Vedanta and the other ones, not only the orthodox ones but even Jainism and Buddhism — for them the final aim is liberation.

Liberation: not the attainment of some great pleasure while being alive or, after death, attaining some great place to be at in the form of a soul. None of that. Liberation. And Vedanta in particular, talks of liberation here and now. We don’t want to entertain ourselves with fanciful concepts like heaven and hell. We are alive right now, and we deserve a liberated life here, right now.

So, what Gandhi was saying was perfectly in alignment with what Indian philosophy — philosophies rather have been asserting all along. Right? Now we will come back, with this understanding, to the state of the woman. Many of you would have read the book, or at least heard of it: “The Second Sex,” Simone de Beauvoir.

So, a very famous quote from there. Yeah, wonderful. Expectedly, it's a girl. “A woman is not born, she becomes a woman.” In other words, she’s made a woman. This is how she is made. She is made like this (rural) alternatively, she is made like this (urban). In either case, she is being made by someone else and that’s not freedom. You get this?

So, modernity — if it is just another name for an appearance or a code of conduct — then it's just another name for a fresh set of bondages. You could say, “She has been told to perform in one way,” and this one is performing in another way. Judith Butler: “Gender is a performance.” You behave a particular way and you will be called modern.

You might say, “No, no we just don’t behave, we also think that way.” But even the thought is an imported one. When we say “imported,” even that implies some agency, some consciousness. Often it is not imported, it is implanted. You don’t even know how it got into you. Are you getting it?

So here — this one (rural woman) — she was objectified by way of ownership. So Manusmriti, for example, would say: “The woman should never be free or independent. She should be dependent on the father, the husband, the sons, but never should she be independent.” So, there was ownership. In this model, there was ownership.

And in this model (urban woman), she’s again being objectified. Though nobody legally owns her now, but don’t we find her objectified in TV commercials every day? Yeah. The objectification is still there. What has changed?

We are talking of freedom, right? And freedom is not about looking like that one, behaving like that one, or even thinking like that one. No. If you are anything like that one, are you free? We are not saying you must necessarily not be like that one. Even that would not be freedom. But to be asked to conform to anything from here and there — is not freedom.

This one (rural women) — the husband would often force himself upon her sexually, right? And she had no voice, no choice. We know of the kind of fertility rates we experienced. We know the kind of maternal deaths during childbirth that we experienced. We also know the kind of gynecological diseases and the deaths related to them. They're experiencing all that.

This one — no, no there is no external entity that can now force itself upon you. But baby you are modern. You're supposed to be sexually available on your own. And if you say, “No, towards this thing, I’m a little reticent. That’s not something that appeals to me, there's not something that I prioritize. Then you're not modern, are you? So even in the sexual sense, modernity is a code of conduct.

Did she have much choice here? No. Even the decision to abort a pregnancy was being taken by somebody else, mostly. Think of it. If she has been fed that she must look sexually attractive, that she must wear a particular kind of clothing, then does she have sexual agency even here? Please, does she have it? The form has changed. The form has become subtler. And when your bondages, your chains, become subtler, invisible, then they become more vicious and harder to tackle.

If you are being controlled from the outside, you would feel like challenging your exploiter. But when you are being controlled from the inside, you say, "Nobody is controlling me. I am my own person. I'm leading my life the way I want to." And that's a deeper form of enslavement. Are you getting it? And then I'm asking you: how far removed is she really from this one?

Yes, in the outer experience and the outer appearance, she indeed does look different. But then so many working women complain of what you call a "second shift" phenomenon. She says, "I do this (office work), and when I return I also do this (household work)." Instead of then having one frame to comply with, she now has two universes to straddle parallelly. Is that freedom? Is that freedom really?

Then if you look at the modern forms of superstition, etc., women happen to be participating with greater vigor in them compared to men. Reports suggest that the membership of the astrology apps — that is skewed towards women. Now, she can't really be an illiterate woman, right? She's downloading an app and using it. Is she really liberated? And the question most frequently asked is, "When would I get married?" Is this liberation?

No. You are just using modern means to fulfill a very primitive, very animalistic instinct. The means are modern. The instinct is primitive. Is that modernity?

Wearing very high clothes — even very revealing clothes — she is participating in some neobogus ritual. That's a word I just coined. Don't look for it in the dictionary. Neobogus sounds right. So, some crystal, some nonsense, something and she looks very modern. Is that freedom?

This one was being sent away with loads of dowry to some person that her father or the extended community chose. So you see the relationship with money here — money, body, family, everything. There was no love. And this one — if she starts aspiring to be a trophy wife, and she is on her own linking her body to money — is there love? What kind of freedom is this that comes without love?

She was not supposed to talk of love. She was supposed to talk only of duties, right? "You have duties towards your husband and your family." This one (urban woman), she doesn't know what love is. So she says, "Fine, you know, let me prepare myself well in order to get the right kind of husband." I know I'm generalizing — greatly generalizing — but that's what the question leads us into.

Freedom is internal to begin with. The roots of freedom are always inside us. Freedom is not demonstrative, not performative. You cannot act a certain way and say, "You know, this is freedom."

So let's take a hint from the Indian systems of philosophy I talked of. They talk of freedom. They say freedom is the goal. And then they also tell you that understanding is your very identity. Understanding not as a task, but understanding as being. I am understanding itself. Understanding not as something that you do, but something that you are. And these two go together — understanding and freedom.

So when you understand what's really, really going on here (within oneself), then you have taken the first baby steps. And then that takes you far, very far. If there is freedom at all, it has to be about knowing what's going on — Knowing what's going on. And from there, the right response to life just spontaneously emerges. That's freedom.

Do I understand what's going on? Or was I being carried away in a particular kind of stream here, and I'm still being carried away, just that the stream has changed? I was being held captive there. I'm still being held captive — just that this time the captivator is sitting within me. Not just sitting within me, but probably also carrying my own name. I am my own slave driver.

Do I understand what's really going on — as a woman or as a man? If I know, that is freedom. Or am I so afraid or just so lazy that I want to follow, to conform, to ask somebody else to lead, to read somebody else's thoughts, and not even meditate properly on them, and just say, "Because everybody is behaving like this, hence I too must," because I don't want to be left out. That's fear. Right? Can fear and freedom go together?

I will repeat that ten times, and that would still be insufficient: Freedom is not about the way you look or walk. It's not about the accent you carry. It's not about how happy your clothes are. It's about whether you know what's really going on. It's not about controlling what's going on. It's about knowing what's going on.

Sartre — “Freedom is what you do with what is done to you.” What is done to you is circumstantial, often very random, uncontrollable. Nobody knows why things happen the way they do outside. But

I must be the master of my interiors. There must be a point within that nobody can touch, nobody can control.

As human beings, every cell of this body — we find it conditioned, don't we? All thoughts are in some way social, coming from here, there, a combination of something — this, that. All emotions are physical. So what is mind then? Finding what is really yours. Can there be freedom without that? Please tell me: if you don't have anything that is yours, can you be free? How can you be free? Everything about you is owned by somebody else. Where is freedom? Are you getting it?

Before you say, "I want to do it. This is my life. This is my choice" — no, this one (rural woman) couldn't even say that, right? She couldn't even say that. You wouldn't hear that even today from middle-aged ladies in the remote areas. You go there and this phrase, this language, this attitude, this metaphor is alien to them. They'll not say, "My life, my choice." No, they won't. This one (urban woman) would say that — and she says that 40 times a day. But really, are your choices free? Where is freedom in your choices?

Without self-knowledge, how will you ever know where your thoughts and actions and feelings are coming from? Feelings — that's a very important word when it comes to our species, and especially the more important gender. If I keep talking of my feelings as the dictator of my life and my actions, do I ever look into where they come from? Have I even begun any kind of self-realization?

"I felt this way, so I decided that way because I'm free to do as I feel." No. When we talk of freedom, that includes freedom from being swept away by the flow of feelings. But feelings are internal, right? I come to you and I say, "I want to take you away," and you resist — probably dial 100101, whatever numbers. "This fellow, he's trying to force himself."

But when some random hormone, some chemical being secreted by some gland you don't even know of, rules you from within and takes you away — why don't you resist? You don't, because you think of that as yourself: "No, nobody is taking me away. That's how I feel." No, that's not how you feel. That's how this primitive body is functioning. And this body has very recently emerged from the jungle just 10,000 years ago. The body is ancient, 4 billion years old. That's when life began in the oceans.

The body is ancient, but consciousness is very, very recent. So the body still manages to rule. Consciousness is a very nascent phenomenon — a new entrant in the life of Homo sapiens. But the body — it's as old as the jungles and the mountains. And it carries all those old, primitive, animalistic tendencies. Now, emotions, feelings — they arise from here. And I say, "You know, this is what I want to do." Are you free?

Some goddamn old animal within is ruling your life. Are you free? And if the same animal could be manifested to appear here — you know, could take a form and express itself here — you'd shriek and run away. "No, no! How can I allow this one to control me?" But this one—that old beast — is sitting right here, in the form of the body. And then we say, "Because I am modern and progressive and liberated, hence I will do as I want to do. My way or the highway," and all those things. Are you free?

That does not mean that you start following somebody else's way. But that "somebody else" becomes all the more nefarious when he finds a subtler way to control you. At the point of a gun, if I control you, maybe you would be controlled — but you would also want to rebel. But if a chip is implanted here, you are sleeping and you were secretly anesthetized, and something was implanted here, and now you are being controlled — remotely controlled and you don't even know you are being controlled by somebody else. Isn't that a deeper and more inextricable form of freedom?

Think of your physical tendencies as that chip. Let them not dictate your life.

Gandhi, Vedanta — all wisdom from all over the world says the same thing: be cautious of the external oppressor. But remember, the external oppressor succeeds only because he has an ally, an agent implanted within you, like a Trojan horse.

If somebody succeeds in oppressing you from outside, that has to be resisted, obviously. But also remember that that one succeeds only because he resonates — he or she or the system, whatever the name of the oppressor be — resonates with something here. Unless that one has an ally within, that one won't succeed. Hence, first of all, what do you need to take care of? The external thing that you call internal — the mole.

Freedom is not an ideal. Freedom does not mean conforming to certain notions. Freedom does not mean that you have to be a superwoman — the kind of things that they show in the movies: "See, look, this is the modern, liberated, progressive woman. And this is what she does. She's a super boss. She's a super mom. She's a super wife. She looks fit and sexy. She is everything all at once."

Freedom does not mean conforming to these things. Freedom is about knowing what is not me. And it's a ruthless inquiry that goes to the extent of asking, "Is even 'me' really me? Do I even exist as an independent, sovereign entity? Is there anything within me that is not a product of the body or the society or circumstances?"

You don't need to come to a conclusion, but these questions must be asked. And any kind of discovery begins with ruthless questioning.

It is easier to talk to someone when the fellow is aware that there is a problem. Then there can be a discussion, then some advice can be rendered. But if you are not even aware that there is a problem — if you think that you are already fine, healthy, free, and all the good things — then it becomes extremely difficult to talk.

The modern woman — she has been given two contradictory, conflicting ideals. On one hand, yes, she has been told humility is a good thing. On the other hand, she has also been told that you have to be really assertive about who you are and what you want — which is all fine. But is there listening? And without listening, can there be any understanding? And if you don't understand, are you free?

And isn't it a mark of fear if you cannot even listen — if certain things cannot even be discussed? But performative modernity means exactly that: it has already been decided what can be discussed and what cannot be. It was the same thing here — just that the list of do's and don'ts have changed. Do's and don'ts operated there, and do's and don'ts operate here as well. Are we together?

Questioner: Sir, I'm saying comfort zone does play a role in it, right?

Acharya Prashant: Yes, it does. Because be it a man or a woman, we are not really physically born to struggle for our liberation. You have seen animals in captivity. Don't they breed there? In fact, probably they breed more prolifically in captivity than in their relative freedom of the jungle.

As animals, we are not designed to ask so staunchly for freedom that we'll sacrifice everything for it. If I am being held captive and being given even enough food, and if there is a partner, then I'll breed. Then I'll breed — just keep me comfortable.

The body says, "Comfort is more important than freedom." That's what the body says. And that's the reason why philosophy constantly urges you to inquire: to what extent do you want to obey the body? Decide for yourself what kind of relationship you want to have with the body. Because the body is not interested in the higher things of life. You are reading a great book — doesn't the body want to just fall asleep? Please tell me. You have an important flight to catch, and the body refuses to wake up. The body is not interested in flying high. The body is interested in happily lying low and snoring. That's what the body is like.

It is one of the most fundamental freedoms: the freedom to challenge the body.

The freedom to tell the body, "Yeah, you are doing what you are designed to do, and let me do what I am here to do.

We will coexist. We will be good neighbors. But let us know our respective domains and also respect the boundaries."

Questioner: Sir, on the level of family, market — we all see a level, right? Like if I have done something good, my father praised me or my mother praised me or my friends praised me. But if they are opposing me, then I will think but also I will not resist on some level. So up to which level is it right? Or how should we be?

Acharya Prashant: It depends on the kind of love you have for yourself. And that love decides the level of your resistance. Little love, little resistance. Great love….So, there can be no template I can offer. There is something that I immensely value in life. Someone wants to take it away. How much resistance would I offer? Depends on the love I have for that thing. Depends on the love.

And love is not something that can be forced. Love is something available only to those who are in touch with themselves, first of all. It is not about being in touch with somebody else. The first thing is about seeing who you are, and hence, what it is that you really aspire for. And then you are drawn towards that which aligns with your real aspiration. That is love. It must be very, very intense — very intense.

I love to quote Saint Kabir when it comes to love, and when it comes to love for freedom in particular. I'll quote him in the original:

"Adhik sanehī machharī, dūjā alap saneh Jab hī jal te bichhure, tab hī tyāge deh.”

Love must be like that of the fish for the vastness of the ocean. That should be the quality of your love. I'm in love with immensity. I don't love small things. The moment you pull me out of the ocean, I'll simply die. That's the intensity of love that you need. You pull me out, and I won't live beyond a minute. Getting it?

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